Mr B: Can Goldfish Change colour?

Mid 2012 we decided it was time to introduce pets into the household, we joked for a while that we’d start small and have a couple of fish and if we managed to keep them alive then we could make a slow progression towards having children.

I think it would have been easier to actually have the children first and then we could prove to the pet shops that we were responsible enough to be granted the privilege of having fish.

When I was a kid I remember you were able to go to the fairground and throw a few darts or hit a coconut and the fairgrounds would give you a goldfish in a plastic bag filled with water, then you would take it home, wipe the dust off the old fish bowl you have under the sink and you have a pet.

The amount of questions you get asked when you go in looking for a fish nowadays is scary. Have you had Fish before? What type of tank do you have? Is it an established tank? Are there Fish in there already? What is the size of the tank? We tried 3 times before we were allowed to leave the store with the precious cargo and even then we had to fill in a form and leave our contact details, presumably so that the united federation of Fish protection could contact us to make sure that we were not guilty of any ill treatment.

My wife decided to go for a pure white fish and I went for a gold one with a Black back that extended onto a full black tail. They sit in pride of place in our kitchen and we have now got them a much larger tank as they were looking crowded in the small one we initially had as they have grown quite a bit since we first had them.

I noticed the other day that my golden coloured fish with the Black tips and black tail has changed colour. I thought first of all that I was imagining it but I looked back at a photograph I had taken when I first introduced them to our home and sure enough almost all of the black section has totally gone leaving a full orange fish in its place.

The next day I mentioned this at work and I received some very funny looks, goldfish don’t just change colour. The general belief was that my fish had died and before I got home my wife had replaced it with a look alike. With all of the problems we had populating the tank in the first place I dismissed this entirely but there is always an element of doubt isn’t there…….?

Luckily a quick Google search gave me the answer I was looking for. Goldfish can apparently change colour.